Los Angeles, California
July 24, 2000

Dear Readers,

Today’s letter is by Dishwasher Pete. I first met Pete through his zine, Dishwasher, a sporadically published first-person account of Pete’s quest to wash dishes in all fifty united states. It’s a remarkable ongoing document of personal journalism, but it’s more than that, too: any given issue is part cultural history of dishwashing, part manifesto on the minimum wage, and part travelogue. Pete is working on issue #16 right now, though it might not be done for a few months (or years); to order it, send a dollar or two, and perhaps some stamps, to:

Dishwasher
P.O. Box 8213
Portland, OR 97207
USA.

You will not be disappointed.

Pete’s letter is to “Satch,” a thirty-three-year-old professional dishwasher in Gainesville, Florida. Like Pete, Satch is committed to remaining a dishwasher, resisting the inevitable entreaties from employers to “move up” to bussing or waiting tables or cooking.

Unlike Pete, Satch was working without a sense of a nationwide dishwashing community, until about a year ago, when someone gave Satch a copy of Dishwasher. As Pete tells it, Satch was relieved and excited to discover that he wasn’t alone in his devotion to his craft. He wrote Pete, and they began a correspondence, between Florida and whichever state Pete is in at the time. Today’s letter is part of that ongoing conversation.

It’s also the first installment in our week of letters about life at work. All week, our correspondents will be writing about things that happen where they work – whether that’s a physics lab, a tech-support cubicle, or a religious-publishing office. Tomorrow: a letter about teaching poetry to the sixth grade.

Yours truly,

Paul Tough